It's been awhile since I've sat down and written any of these down, so I'll begin with a strange and yucky story I'll call "The Human Piñata", then follow with some brief tales from the bar.
A couple of these stories involve homeless people, so I'll give a bit of background info on what the situation is like here in the middle of Alaska, in my opinion of course.
This summer has been the worst I can remember for "chronic inebriates of no fixed address"… homeless drunks. It's an unfortunate aspect of our demographics here in Fairbanks, Alaska, that most of our homeless drunk population are Alaska Natives (mostly Athabascan Indians and a few Eskimos). They've always been around – when I was a little kid we called them "bridge trolls" because they camped out under the bridges – but several rural villages flooded in the spring, and the state moved their populations to Fairbanks until the villages could be rebuilt… but the rebuilding is of course taking longer than expected, so the hotels have large numbers of unhappy villagers staying in them, at taxpayer expense, often from ‘dry' villages and now in a town with 30+ bars, no jobs & very little to do. So they drink and party all day and night, then get kicked out of their hotels and have nowhere to go but the street – and with our warm weather and 22+ hours of sunlight, the streets aren't too bad, for now. Come wintertime I'm afraid we'll have some deaths, but till then the whole downtown area is almost overrun with groups of drunks.
The downtown area is also supposed to be one of the big tourist-y areas in town – there's a river walk, tons of gift shops, a big brand new Marriott hotel, a few old churches, several of the nicest restaurants in town, and the Visitors Information Bureau, as well as several parks. The drunks like the parks because they're comfortable, the churches because they give out food, and the tourists because they can hassle them for money and cigarettes. There's also a big Native center and the AK Native hospital right there (a free hospital that you can only attend if you're Native). The bar I work at is between the park and the hospital… and this summer my job involves a lot of standing in the door and turning the drunks away. We've got two doors: one at the front of the building and one at the rear – and the door at the front has access to our upstairs, where the bathrooms are. It's inevitable that whenever I turn my back, or duck behind the bar to do dishes or take out the trash, someone comes in our front door, runs upstairs, and curls up in our bathroom to sleep.
I'm SO sick of being called racist twice a day… I've even been told that I don't have the right to kick them out of the bar, since I'm white and this is their land anyways…
It's almost funny – when I worked at the Loon, every time I kicked a black guy out, it was because I was racist against blacks. When I worked at the Hide Out, on numerous occasions when I kicked a white guy out, it was because "The Hide Out is a black bar, and we don't like white customers!" Now I'm at the Mine, and I apparently don't like Natives now… it's always easier for people to think that the flaw isn't in their own behavior, but in the mind of the person telling them something they don't want to hear…
I mentioned that the downtown area has several very nice restaurants – and it does. A big percentage of our regular customers are employees at these restaurants. On any given night we'll have anywhere from 4-20 (restaurant) bartenders, wait staff, and cooks in the building. These guys deal with the homeless people at their jobs, too – but with the upscale and/or corporate attitudes at those restaurants, they have to be much nicer to the homeless than they'd like to be – and you can't even show basic human compassion to them. I've worked at the Mine for nearly two years now, and invariably if you let one inside to warm up, next they want a book of matches, then a bag of chips, then they're bumming cigarettes from the customers or falling asleep in a booth – and they get violent or at least violently upset if you ask them to leave. Which really sucks, and I hate to treat people that way, but there's absolutely nothing you can do for chronic inebriates that isn't enabling them. It's best to turn them away at the door, and not take any crap from them if they're inclined to give it out.
So these cooks and waiters have my back, should I need it – and they give me a heads-up if there are people lurking outside, or if someone sneaks into the bathroom.
For example, earlier this spring one of the waiters told me that there was a homeless person sleeping on the floor of our bathroom… so I went up there, and sure enough, there was a guy sleeping on the floor! He can't have been there long; I'd just used the restroom myself not half an hour previous… He had a 40oz beer on the floor next to him, so I grabbed that and tossed it in the garbage.
(I've been hit by a bottle before, and it's not like the movies – the bottle doesn't break, it makes a ‘TOONG' noise, and I fall down)
I then tried to wake the guy up by loudly saying "HEY, WAKE UP!" and poking him with my foot… he grumbled and mumbled, but didn't respond much beyond that. So, I leaned over and picked him up. A bottle of liquor fell out of his pocket on the way up, and I kicked it aside. I frog-marched him down the hallway towards the stairs leading to the exit, and as we walked down the hall he started to walk under his own power. He was smelly and dirty, so as we approached the stairs I let go of him completely.
But as soon as he got to the end of the hall, the top of the steps, he collapsed (!), falling down the stairs and landing with a CRASH, as coins exploded everywhere, like a human piñata! Apparently all of his pockets were filled with pennies and nickels. The tumble finally woke him up completely, and he struggled to his feet, cursing "I need my change! I need my change!!"
I was right behind, following him down the stairs, at first afraid that he'd hurt himself, but then standing between him and the interior of the building – "NO, you do NOT need your change, you need to LEAVE!"
He tried to push past me a couple of times, half-heartedly, but eventually I was able to shoo him out the door. Afterwards I *needed* to wash my hands, so I went back to the bathroom to clean up… and I noticed the liquor bottle on the floor, the one that I'd kicked aside earlier. Upon closer examination, turns out it's a bottle of Listerine, but it's an odd brown-ish color.
Now, I'm familiar with mouthwash, but I've never seen brown mouthwash before… so, gingerly, timidly, I twist open the cap and smell the contents. Its Listerine mixed with beer. EWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! I hope to never smell such a combination again…
**********
Another incident involving a homeless guy never even got through our front door – I can see the entryway from the spot by the bar where I normally hang out, and I saw a pair of feet pushing a wheelchair in through the doorway. I always watch that door so I can walk over there and check the ID's of people who come in that way (the multiple doors are one of the frustrations of my job…)
So I walked over to the doorway to see who was coming in (and to ID them if necessary), and turns out it was a homeless guy struggling to push a wheelchair across the doorjamb. He is so drunk that the only reason he's upright is because he's leaning on the wheelchair, which makes maneuvering it across the doorway rather difficult. The unfortunate woman in the wheelchair has one leg in a cast, and she is also so drunk that she's motionless like a corpse. The man is big and hairy, 50-ish, wearing army fatigues, bearded and filthy. He looks kinda like Jesus crossed with a lumberjack, then dunked in vinaigrette.
I say, "I'm sorry man, but I can't let you inside, you have to go somewhere else".
"What do you mean, I can't come in?"
"I mean exactly that – we're not going to serve you alcohol, and we're not going to let you in the building". I say ‘we' because a couple of the waiters who are our regular customers have come over to see what's going on.
The woman rouses herself enough to spit out the word "PISS", which seems to encourage the man to suddenly yell "SHE NEEDS TO USE THE BATHROOM! YOU HAVE TO LET ME IN!!!"
"Dude, I am not going to let you try to push that chair up these stairs in your condition. Try the hospital; it's only a block away".
"YOU BASTARD! YOU CAN'T SAY NO TO ME!!"
I get the impression that this guy is accustomed to getting his way when he yells at people. It's a tactic that doesn't work very well on me.
"Sir, this is private property, you do not have a right to be here." (that's one of my stock phrases)
"PRIVATE?!?!?! This is a PUBLIC BAR!!! YOU *HAVE* TO LET ME IN!"
"Nope."
By now, I've got three antsy, excited waiters standing behind me, attracted by the yelling. I'm standing on the landing in front of the door, the wheelchair is blocking the doorway, and the homeless guy is standing behind the wheelchair, just outside the door. He roars at me, and stutter/jerks the wheelchair forward at me, like a feint. This wakes the woman in the chair up enough to mutter "…piss…" again, and I take a step back.
I'm not going to try to start a fight over the head of a woman in a wheelchair, but no way am I letting the guy inside, either. I lean way back, out of the guy's reach, but put my foot forward on a rail on the bottom front of the chair, so he can't move it forward anymore. He complains and yells for another minute or two, trying to rattle the chair through the door, but I refuse to speak again (anything I say is just going to antagonize him anyways), and eventually he pulls the wheelchair backwards out of the doorway and stalks off down the sidewalk, aiming a poor approximation of a sideways karate kick in my direction as he leaves.
So the waiters and I give a collective sigh of relief, laugh a bit about the craziness of the guy ("A ‘public' bar? Really? Does the SPQR own any bars?"), and we spend a moment on the landing, when the homeless guy comes running back at the door! I have just enough time to grab the handle so he can't get it open, but we can see him banging and yelling and spitting through the window on the door. He's yelling variants on the same theme, "WHAT KIND OF MAN ARE YOU, YOU WON'T LET A WOMAN IN A WHEELCHAIR USE THE BATHROOM!! YOU HAVE TO LET ME IN!! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!! LET ME IN!!"
(That's another bit of rage/drunk logic that always amuses me, the "You have to let me in so I can do violence" argument…)
So I whip out my cell phone and dial 911 – and show the phone to the guy through the door. "If you don't leave now, I'm going to dial 911 and you'll go to jail". Often, showing someone my phone with the 911 visible on the screen is enough to get them to bail, sometimes it doesn't work…
This is one of those occasions where it doesn't work. Threatening to dial 911 seems to only make him angrier, and holding the door with only one hand instead of two (I've got my phone in the other hand now…), means that he's able to jerk the door out of my hand. He steps through the door, I step back, and he takes a wild swing at me, missing me…
… and one of the waiters JUMPS past me, catching the guy in a flying tackle! He's still wearing his white shirt and black tie uniform, and the homeless guy grabs the shirt by the buttons, ripping it as they both fall to the ground, grappling.
The lady in the wheelchair looks up at the commotion and mumbles "…PISS…" again.
I'm so surprised that I pause for a moment, and the second waiter jumps on the pile, pinning the guy's legs. I hand my phone to a third guy who was watching the show, say ‘Call 911', and step forward to help. The first waiter has the guy's torso, the second has his legs, but the homeless guy is still flailing around with his arms, yelling and trying to get away.
(The waiters are having a GREAT time, by the way)
So I grab the guy's one free arm and kneel on his chest to keep him immobile. I try to talk to him, but he's gone, completely inarticulate. To their credit, the waiters are only holding the guy; they're not hitting or trying to hurt him. At one point, he tries to bite me, so I grab his hair to hold his head back, but it's so dirty and oily that it feels like it's been slicked by Vaseline…
So the cops show up, they know the homeless guy AND his wheelchair-bound wife by name, they search him and find a couple of bottles of liquor on his person & dump them out.
My boss also appears at about this time – I know that he must have only recently arrived at the bar, because he wasn't in the building when the incident started. I explain to him what had happened, and he says, "Yeah, when I drove up I saw the pile of bodies on the sidewalk out front, but I saw that Alex was on top of the pile, so I figured I had time to park my truck…"
It's pretty awesome to have a boss who actually trusts me to do my job, and now I can get free meals at a couple of restaurants from my new waiter ‘buddies'…
**********
I recently pulled a guy up the stairs in a very uncomfortable manner (uncomfortable to him, at least!), completely unintentionally!
A large group of young people came into the bar together, I checked all their ID's, and they were all OK to be in the bar… but within a few minutes it became evident that one of them was a problem. And on closer examination he didn't match the rest of the group, either – they were mostly college granola/moneyed hippie types, but this guy had truly shabby clothes, not the trendily-frayed jeans and Carharrts that the others were wearing. He also had a big band-aid on his chin.
Band-Aid guy is stumbling around, bothering people, asking random strangers for money & trying to bum cigarettes off of people. I'm a little embarrassed that I let him through, but he was in the middle of a big group & managed to blend in, straighten himself out long enough to seem sober while he showed me his ID.
I go over to one of his friends and tell him that Band-Aid guy needs to sit down, drink some water, and stop bugging people, or someone from their group will have to take him home. The ‘friend' informs me that Band-Aid guy isn't a member of their group at all – he just ducked into the middle of them as they walked into the bar.
I was trying to be nice – often, asking one member of a large group to leave means that the whole group will leave, so if it's possible to make one member of the group baby-sit a problem person, feed them water or coffee, we'll let the one stay.
But since Band-Aid guy is apparently alone, I don't have any reason to let him stay, so I talk to him.
"Excuse me young man, but it's time for you to go home. Can we call you a taxi?"
"Whaddya mean I have to leave? I'm not leaving! Why??"
"Well, you're stumbling and begging, so it's time to go."
He responds to this by dashing over to the nearest occupied table, snatching a full beer from the people sitting there, and upending it over his mouth, desperately trying to suck as much of it out as fast as possible.
I respond by grabbing the beer with my right hand, and grabbing Band-Aid guy around the neck with my left arm. He's small and light, so I just lift a little, and he grabs my arm with both hands and tiptoes along with me towards the (front) door. I toss the beer in the garbage on the way (I will later make sure that we replace the poor surprised random patron's stolen beer).
When we get to the steps (up, leading to a small landing with the exit door on it), he goes limp. I don't know why they do it, but this happens rather often… for some reason, the drunks think that if they go limp and sit on the steps, somehow it will magically allow them to stay in the bar. I drop him – I can't keep carrying him like that if he's limp, so I let go, figuring I can change my grip around.
He's sorta curled up into a fetal-type position, not speaking, so I grab him by one of his arms, and I grab his pants, looking for a belt. A belt is a great handle to carry people by.
But he's not wearing a belt. He's got rather baggy jeans, so I just twist a big handful of pants into my hand and start hauling him up the steps (he's refusing to stand). Oddly, as soon as I start pulling him up the steps, he starts SCREAMING and flailing – I can barely hold his arm, so I end up pulling most of his body weight by the handful of denim I've got in my other hand. It's odd that he's screaming so loudly… people almost always object to being ejected from the bar , but rarely in such a vociferous fashion. But I've only got to pull him up six or seven steps, so I don't stop. It isn't until we reach the top of the steps and I let go of my handful of denim that I realize I had more than just fabric in my hand. The poor guy is gasping for breath and clutching himself…
"So, um…yeah… that's right! And stay out…"
He takes a moment to catch his breath, climbs to his feet, and walks away nearly doubled over.
I walk back down the steps into the bar, to be met with applause and catcalls.
"WOOHOO! Yeah! You pulled that guy up the steps by his junk!" etc…
All I can think is that I really, really need to wash my hands…
**********
One of my brothers is a short order cook, and he recently got a job at one of the restaurants whose staff patronizes my bar. He told me that once the people there found out that he was my brother, he started to hear numerous stories, all different, but with certain similarities. They generally began with "OH MY GOD, I was SO effing drunk!!!" and end with "… and then your brother was a jerk!" He and I got a laugh out of that one, and people's apparent inability to connect the beginning and the ending of those numerous tales…
**********
Among my many tasks at work, especially on weeknights, is bar backing. Basically, as a bar back, I assist the bartender with little time-consuming things, stuff like wiping down tables, stocking beer and liquor, and doing dishes. I do this in addition to checking ID's and monitoring the doors and the crowd. When I'm behind the bar doing dishes, it's almost like I'm invisible to the people on the other side of the bar… I overhear all sorts of odd, funny and random conversation. A few examples:
A guy about my age (mid 30's) was chatting up a young gal (just barely 21 – I know because I checked her ID). He had some very well done tattoos, including a full sleeve on his right arm, and he mentioned them to the girl.
She replied: "Oh, yeah, my dad has tattoos like that. A lot of you old guys do. Those must have been really cool, like, 20 years ago, huh?"
The guy was flabbergasted, didn't know what to say, and went off to talk to some friends.
I could barely contain my laughter… I've suspected for a while that a time would come when tats would become something (for the next generation) that their parents used to be into, and thus completely uncool…
**********
Another time, I overheard two very nice-looking young ladies talking to each other.
Gal #1 "I've lost a lot of weight lately, I can tell."
Gal #2 "Yeah, you look good."
Gal #1 "No, you don't understand – I can *really* tell that I've lost the weight."
Gal #2 "Um… OK, what do you mean – how can you ‘really tell' that you've lost so much weight?"
Gal #1 looks around conspiratorially, and whispers to her friend… "White guys are hitting on me again!"
**********
And I think that about covers it for now… I'm still way behind in my bar story writings… last Saturday was a rough night, probably worth writing about, plus I'd like to finish "Escalation Beyond All Reason", and a few others that I just haven't gotten around to finishing.
Now I need to get me some sleep, so off to bed with me! I've got to be back at work in about nine hours! I hope you are all able to find some amusement in my little tales from work…
-Alex in Alaska
experiments with using recessed bases for figures with cast-on bases.
